


Where We Find Rest

by green_my_eyes



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-02 15:13:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4064635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/green_my_eyes/pseuds/green_my_eyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When all the world is corroding sand and broken bodies, I hope you find some solace in the simple comfort of two steady hands. </p>
<p>A series of short stand-alone stories, post Fury Road.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Furious Furiosa

Furiosa knew what death was when she was five years old. It was the flailing screaming mass of her mother digging desperate nails into dirt and skin and anything as she was dragged off into the unknown by hulking white men. It was the cries of “Fight them, kill them, my love, survive. Survive. Live on.”

She didn't have a name then. She was a darling, a child, my little lullaby. Her skin was soft and darkened by growing up as a small flower in a giant field of vegetables and plants. Names weren't given, where she was from, they were earned.

They put her to work on the craggy cliffs that broke off into sudden luscious green. She was one of hundreds of pretty little girls who picked and plucked and planted until they reached an age where they disappeared forever. Each one replaced with a new bawling baby, confused and tired by small hands and an abundance of work. She gathered them at the end of the day and bundled them into a small sleeping pile. She quieted their cries with stories of a land far, far away, large and fertile and endless and filled with mothers, only mothers, who loved them, each and every one. She kissed bruised and battered knees. She brushed hair into makeshift braids and pony tales. And she held tight, so tight, to stifle tears cried out for a momma under the looming night sky.

But they all went some day. Ones even smaller than she was, with big, scared eyes and sniffling noses and names like Lilly and Sweet-pea and Peony. They were all taken from her.

She earned her name when the day came for her to be yanked from the green clifftops and shackled below. She dug her teeth into the fleshy arm of a fumbling, fondling war boy. He slammed her tiny body into a wall, hard enough that dirt and plaster rained from the ceiling. But instead of crumpling into a broken heap on the ground, she let out a roar of smoldering rage and lifted her bloody self up. Fifteen years old and she plucked out his eyes with hands that used to reach up in wonder at fireflies and stars. From then on she was the wild child, feral Furiosa, branded with a sigil and tattoos of eternally pulsing life and power. No one dare touch her unless they wanted to be witnessed.

She lived on the tops of tankers, flitted and fluttered underneath the churning bellies of war machines. Sand and bullets turned impressionable skin to hardened leather. Blood became water, each dead body became another number, another goal. Each time the party turned east, she scanned the horizon with a desperate fervor for something, anything, please just a tiny glimpse of green.

Once, with her mouth sprayed chrome and eyes tired and body savage she threw herself onto a war buggy bursting to the brim with gas guzzlers. Her brothers behind her let out a raucous roar in witness and slammed their hands flat against the metal of their trucks in a constant beat. To this beat she turned the buggy into a sloshing mess of mangled bones and blood. The beating of hands against steel slowed and stopped grounding to silence when her foot hit the accelerator and she called out of the window: “Let's go, we have to get this shipment to Gastown by sundown.”

Her arm went after a wasteland bug ripped a rusted broken spear through her muscle. They were on the road south, stranded after a massive swirling storm of dust.

“You may have to put this one down” The medic told the Imperator one night as she sweated through her clothes, her arm pulsing with ooze.

“You can't afford to put me down.” She spat back at him.

“She's insubordinate to boot” The medic didn't face her.

The Imperator nodded, “That she is, that she is. Damn shame, but between you and me, she's been a pain in my ass since day one” He let out a hacking phlegmy cough. “Do her in.”

It took fifteen minutes for her to hoist the Imperator's limp head up in one hand and secure her position on top of the main rig. The entire camp hushed into silence and lifted folded hands above their bowed heads.

“This mouth has given its last order” She called out, “You officially answer to me now,” the camp beat their fists into the dirt, raising up a giant cloud of ashy dust.

“As if you did anything else before.” There was a collective, synchronized laugh.

“We keep to the same plan, no changes, except we now have one less inconvenience. Rest up, feed up, bleed up, we set out at dawn. Understood?”

They all lifted their arms again and in perfect unison replied “Yes, sir”


	2. The Dag

Max's world was blue and brown. Blue sky, brown dirt, brown skin, blue eyes. There was comfort in monotony. The world was balanced, calm in consistent blue and brown. But sometimes there was red. The red ripping winds of a storm on the horizon, red splatters of blood splashed into the sand. It threw him off balance, disrupted the routine, it sent his body into seizing motions he couldn't control and his brain into another time that didn't exist.

It happened at night, mainly. His rocking and swaying world crumbling into the ground because three straight days of fighting with no sleep was hard enough on someone who wasn't cracked straight through. He never made a sound but his eyes spun in wild circles tracing lines where people could be but weren't and his body was rendered useless by tremors so violent he could barely breathe.

He was imploding, caving in on himself, getting trapped. Furiosa would try, “Hey, hey, look at me” to reach his eyes “breathe with me. Breathe.” to reach into wherever he was, “Max, Max, it's Furiosa, Max, you're safe at home with me right now.”

Usually his eyes would still and settle and grow heavy and tired and he would rest his weary limbs against Furiosa's, tangibly grounding himself against her body. But other times he left, completely. Only for a few hours, but his body, his eyes, his breathing, would focus and tense into complete, terrifying stillness that no word or touch or shake could disturb. The spell always ended abruptly: he would lift himself up and drop with a limp restraint into bed and stare at the ceiling, drawing patterns over Furiosa's skin until daylight came.

When the tremors stopped and the morning rose, Furiosa would coax Max out of the room and take him up to the top shelf of the cliffs, where everything was a vibrant shade of living growth. While he stood a shocked, still slightly shaking mess, Furiosa would whisper that she'd be back and vanish, leaving him entirely alone in the great green endlessness of leaves, quivering in a soft breeze, water bubbling around in irrigation and bugs flying and sticking to his already sweating skin.

On one such day a voice called out from atop a rickety wooden watch tower, “Strange man, ho!”and a tall slender silhouette appeared, leaning precariously over the bannister, “Oh, it's _my_ strange man, ho!”

She sprung up and dashed down the wooden ladder of the tower, an angelic entity made entirely of gangly limbs and silver hair. She ran straight to Max without any temptation of hesitation and grabbed his hands tightly within her own spindly fingers.

“Once again, my lovely Fool has returned to me!”

“Dag.” he grunted, eyes cast downwards to the dark fertile dirt.

She pressed her forehead to his hands softly and then pried at his tense fists, “Let's see, let's see, from what hell hath thou come, to what hell shalt thou go,” Once his knuckles were wrenched open, she probed her fingertips over the lines carved into his shaking palms. She tsked twice and closed his fists with a swift pat, “A mystery as always, my stoic Fool, but I think tomorrow will be kind to you.”

She bent over and stuck her head into his line of vision and whispered sweetly “Come on, I have some lovely presents.” 

The Dag led him along, hooking her pinky around his. She wound him through rows and rows of blossoming tendrils, freshly fragrant of a far off spring, up to a large wooden cabin that had huge open windows. He kept his eyes on his feet the entire walk.

The inside ceiling of the cabin was lined with flowers hanging upside down and perfumed with a scent that nearly always knocked Max off his feet. Dag left him at the doorstep and went inside, darting through isles and isles of petals and herbs. She cooed and clapped her hands together, plucking a large bundle of bright purple flowers tied together with twine.

“These are for Furiosa, give them a smell.” she tossed the bundle at his head and he snatched it with clumsy, bumbling hands. “Tell her to crush them up and put them in her pillow, she'll sleep marvelously.”

Max stared at her.

“Or I'll just tell her”

“”ve got it.”

She smiled wide and went back to digging furiously around in a different isle, yanking out a pan, some cups, and a handful of dried leafy greens. Then she zipped past him back outside, calling back. “This is for you, come on, keep up”

She dipped the pan in an irrigation pit and slipped into a different, smaller one room cabin next to the large drying room. The cabin was windowless and bare except for a fire pit, a mattress, and a wall filled completely with small pieces of paper covered in different drawings.

“Sit, sit.” She said, fussing about trying to get a fire started. Max silently grabbed the flint and strike from her hands and knelt down, sparking the tinder instantly. “You know” she said “I _do_ do this every day when you're not around. All on my own.”

He glanced up at her then back down at the fire breathing to life, then back to her again.

She gave a huff, “Right, okay, fine.” and hung the pan over the flame.

As Dag tended to the pot, throwing various leaves and stems and flowers in, crushing some between her fingers, Max absentmindedly curled patterns into the dirt floor with a small twig-- flowers and leaves, a small angelic face.

“Alright, all done!” she poured the contents of the pan into two cups and handed the steaming cup to Max. “Careful, it's very hot, sip it slow.”

It was fragrant and Max took a slow, careful sip. He blinked in confusion and took another sip. Flavour. A bursting confusion of something that wasn't gritty, bloody, and raw. Another, larger sip. It was... nice. Soft. Familiar in a way his mind flip frantically to place, that made his stomach clench in a not entirely unpleasant way.

“Doesn't it just melt your bones” She said when he finished the cup.

He nodded to her and they sat in silence for a few moments.

She stood up, pushed her hair back, and put her hands on her hips, “Alright now that's enough dilly dallying for the day, it's time to put you to work.”

 

When Max snuck into Furiosa's room that night, she was still up. She was sitting against the wall, eyes closed, head lifted up towards the ceiling and a wet towel pressed to the right side of her face and neck. Under the towel, Max could see her cheek glowing angry red and swollen. Max collapsed next to her with a slightly dramatized groan and lifted the towel gingerly. A large bruise was blooming along her cheek bone.

She glanced at him through a swollen eye, “I'll tell you what happened only if you promise not to laugh at me,” she prefaced.

He raised his eyebrows, a little insulted.

She raised her's back, then sighed and mumbled fast, “I was fixing the rig and a bolt got caught. I tried prying it out and just....” she mimicked the motion of hitting herself in the face with a wrench with a loud pop of her mouth.

Max snorted and nearly smiled.

“Hey,” she pointed a finger at him, “what did I say?”

He lifted a finger, one moment, still nearly smiling. Then lifted his hands in front of his face like a prayer, closed his eyes, and opened them, fixing her with a fiercely serious glare. They maintained a stare off for less than a second before Furiosa began laughing at herself and Max broke into a full smile. She rest her forehead against his with a soft tap.

“Seriously though,” She started. Max grabbed her jaw and turned her face so he could assess the damage better, “this is classified information. If anyone asks, I was respectfully pistol whipped.”

He hummed in mocking agreement.

“Your hands are covered in dirt.”

He hummed again.

“But you smell nice.”

His eyes brightened for a moment, let go of her face, and shifted around to pull the bundle of flowers out from his dirty bag. “Dag says put 'em” he gestured to the bed, “in there. To sleep.”

Furiosa took the bundle and smelled them, “Oh,” closed her eyes. “They're nice,” and leaned her head back against the wall. Max spread the towel back across her face and she stilled, only moving her arm every so often to smell the flowers again.

Max flopped his legs one over the other and opened his bag up, rummaging around, grabbing out a crumpled scrap of paper, a large needle, and some berries the Dag gave him. He crushed one between his fingers, dipped the needle in the juice, and began to draw.

When he was nearly finished Furiosa opened her eyes and silently examined his work, watching his as he put the final touches on his design with a certain delicate quality he only seemed possessed when he drew. With a tired voice she told him,“You better get that up to her fast or the war boys will shoot you down without checking who it is.” He nodded, stood up, and ran a hand over her head.

He pointed to the flowers,“Get some sleep”

“I will”

“I'll be back.”

“I know. I'll be here”


	3. Spines

Max snuck into her room the same time he always did, silently slinking into the bed and matching his bare spine up with hers. But Furiosa was a raging type of restless fidgeting slightly, shaking her legs and kicking back sheets. She rolled over and faced Max's large back.

"Are you asleep?" she whispered to his spine.

His shoulders shook back and forth slightly before he returned to stillness. She watched the letters on his back distort and stretch with each breath he took. Silently she leaned her head against him and closed her eyes, feeling his pulse beat. After a moment, she began to trace the tiny patterns of the scars that rested underneath his faded tattoos. The gentle distortion of his breath stilled for a moment, before he flipped his body over to face her, equal staring eye to eye. Max's eyes were frantically assessing her face-calm, and hand- soft, before staring and searching through her eyes. Her hand stayed still until his searching calmed then she moved as carefully as possible and placed a palm to his cheek. Instinctively he leaned into the touch, warm and soft and sacred, his eyes fluttered closed for a moment longer than a blink.

They stayed like this, Max's forehead slightly wrinkled, eyebrows slightly raised, Furiosa's face remained a constant cool stream of calm, with fingers vibrating slightly against his skin.  
She inched towards him a little, her hand grazing down his face to rest on the crook of his shoulder. The confusion on Max's face left for a moment. They had been here before, facing each other at night when the entire world was quiet and still and they could each breathe.

But then Max lifted a finger to roll down Furiosa's cheek. The motion was familiar, the context was different, never this shaky, never this close. their breaths mingled and all she could see was his eyes, still, blue, constant.  
She pressed her forehead against his and moved her palm back to his cheek. This was new territory, one mapped out and deemed foreboding at best.

He mirrored her, but tilted her jaw forwards, their forehead contact breaking in an open ended question.  
"It's okay." she whispered "right?"

And he brushed his lips against hers, a light flutter of skin against skin. And she answered back with a little more push, a little more pucker, a fumbling bit of life. It continued back and forth, a gentle call and answer that merged together slowly into one fluid motion and moment that went on until Max moved his hand from her cheek to hold the back of her neck, fingers cupping over raised scarred flesh.

Furiosa sprang back fast and rose from the mattress. She stood unsure for a moment before striding to the closed window, wrenching it open, and leaping out onto the outdoor landing. Her silhouette disappeared instantly.

Max sat up on his elbows very slowly, watching and waiting. But when there was no sign of movement, he sat up more and scratched the back of his head absentmindedly, gaze drifting around the room.  
With a small huff he laid back down and stayed there for nearly an hour, closing his eyes, rolling around, kicking up all the sheets and pillows, and mumbling inaudibly to himself.

He crept slowly out of bed and out onto the landing. The night was nearly silent except for a steady western wind that rustled the sand below. The only light was coming from a few fires burning where war boys had collected in a small bundle for warmth. It was enough to illuminate a small lump of jumbled up limbs curled into the corner where wall met banister. She didn't look up at him but gazed transfixed at the war boy's pack.

Max went back into the room for a brief second before coming back out with the discarded blanket.

He extended his hand to Furiosa, and she considered it for a moment before grasping it, max yanking her upward. Once fully on her feet, he threw the blanket over her shoulders and wrapped it around her arms, grunting to himself softly and nodding as he brushed her clean of dirt and gravel. When he was done, she leaned against the banister on her elbows, looking back out over the waste of sand and boys.

"I'm trying" she said into the air, eyes wide and red.

Max nodded

"I don't get jumpy." She said, glancing back at him.

He snorted a laugh and nodded again.

She turned her body towards him, but kept her eyes on his face, standing as close as she could without making contact, "God, I just...want... I...I'm sorry"

He made a small sound of agreement and almost to himself whispered "you'll be okay"

He lead her back into the room and before they matched up spine to spine once more, she pressed her lips against the skin of his chest.


	4. Capable

Nux was a tangible being once. For a few days. He had skin and bones and even a real working heart and brain. But Toast grabbed Capable's shoulders firmly and told her that life in the form of skin and bones tended to stop being tangible when three tons of explosion propelled steel hits it. They didn't need to go back. Because that was the way things went. Everyone was a brief, fleeting passage.

Now Nux was a dusty wasteland ghost that floated along in the periphery of Capable's vision. Paranoia was a disease she thought she'd never need understand, yet here it was digging it's poison dipped claws directly into her spine. It was always on the outside, brief shadowed glimpses during the day, a constant following presence that caused her to double take, triple take the empty air.

She screamed the first time he approached her straight on. It was night, everyone had settled down into their respective spots. Even Capable, though her eyes remained wide and clear in the sleep filled room.

Then there he was, right in front of her. She screamed and flailed and kicked and tore at him, real as could be. Or, almost real as could be; his appearance was smudged, slightly translucent and wavering along the edges. But he was there, bright eyes, pale skin, raised scars, all ten fingers and toes. Capable screamed louder and thrashed harder, and got close enough to nearly graze skin. And then he was gone, vanished, returning to the air.

The other wives, scattered around the room, jumped up with fear-shiny eyes and knives. Fragile grabbed her first, pinning her reaching arms down and stopped the screaming with a steady coo: “There's nothing there, there's no one there, nothing, no one.”

After a long while, when her breathing slowed, eyes dried, and her arms stopped straining to grasp the air, Capable stumbled into sleep with silent wraiths swirling, calling through a storm behind her eyes.

The second night she held her tongue in wonder. Gut churning wonder. Didn't move an inch. Didn't dare to inhale. Nux soundlessly formed and laid down, resting just a few centimeters above the ground, eyes lined with hers. Capable's breath caught and she nearly jerked away as something bubbled over into a hot sting that filled her entire chest. He put a single finger to his lips and smiled. Her fingers tried to reached out, stable and self assured, to touch him. But before skin met skin, his figure whisked away again, there one moment, air the next. She felt nothing.

Capable counted thirty nights, one after the other identically the same. She would lie and he would lie and they would watch each other fall asleep, hands placed as close to the other as was allowed. The distance could have been inches, feet, could have been seconds, decades, Capable couldn't seem to conceive how many grains of sand lay between them.

Then the night came when Capable lay down alone and no pale body came to join her. After nearly an hour of breathless waiting, no movement, no sleep, she sat up and there he was: cross legged and wide-eyed at her feet. Wordlessly, he stood up and hovered over undisturbed sleeping bodies to leave through the doorway.

“Wait!” She whispered after him, and then clamped hands down over her mouth, whipping her head around erratically. No one in the room stirred. She scrambled up as quiet as she could, moving carefully through the room. Around the corner from the doorway, Nux's body hovered still, save for his shimmering edges. His skin illuminated the encasing dark. When she was close enough to begin to call out again, he moved away. She traced after his trail for what felt like miles, years, minutes winding through the carved out cliff. They popped out at the base, desert snaking out eternal before them. Capable stopped before her bare feet touched the sand. Nux kept going.

“Wait!” She whispered to him again, but he kept walking. “Nux!”

She danced along the edge of the sand, then, when his body was beginning to disappear against the edge of the citadel perimeter, she let out a swear and bolted back inside, racing back up all the endless circling stairs. She broke out at the top landing and ran straight to the edge, causing the guarding crew of War Boys to mechanically raise their weapons. She flashed her hands up and turned towards them, “It's just me”, then grabbed the telescope.

One of the larger War Boys, skin pox marked and a skull carved into his chest, came up next to her. “Gave us quite a scare there. Almost shot you through the neck”

“You should have shot me through the head,” she said absently, eyes scanning the horizon. Within seconds she spotted a silvery light flashing against the sand. He was headed towards the canyon.

“What's wrong?” The War Boy asked.

She passed him the telescope. “Do you see anything?”

He looked for a moment then pulled away and stared at her, brow furrowed a little, “Should I?”

“You don't see any sand kicking up?” she asked and grabbed the telescope from him, peering back through it, back to the canyon. There was nothing but the small scattered bones of the war rig poking out from the sand.

“Nah, we've been all clear tonight. Few scavengers out 'round the main road but, you know, that's the usual.”

“Right,” she scrubbed a hand over her face, “Okay. Good.”

“Something up? Should we up the guard?”

“No, no, no. I couldn't sleep and thought I heard the wind pick up. I figured I'd just check and see if there was something blowing through.”

“Well, I'll keep an eye out, but it's been real quiet out here.”

She sighed and slunk back from the edge, “Okay, thank you. And I'm sorry. That I gave you a scare, I mean. I hope you have a nice night.”

The War Boy blinked at her “Yeah.”

And she darted back inside.

 

Before dawn had the chance to break, Capable sneaked her way out of the citadel, food and water stashed in a bag, goggles in hand, hair hidden under a tan scarf. She hesitated once more at the edge of the sand, dipping her feet in slowly, testing the grains between her toes. It wasn't new, wasn't unexpected, it was sand the way sand was. The same constant present that clogged her nose and throat and clung to her skin. She was shaky on the first footfall, breathless and hyper-aware, but after two or three steps on wavering knees, she broke off into a steady stride, slinking around through the decayed shanty town.

The canyon was a solid two day trek through searing sand, and she crawled the entire way. Each time a sound that wasn't her own was made, a lizard or crow creeping the same way she was, she would hunch and hide her obviously living skin. “To be caught, to be dead,” she whispered to herself a soft mantra keeping time with the mechanical movements of her limbs.

By the time she reached the open rocks and the wreck that lay inside, the sun had slid it's way down the sky for the second time. Her hands and feet were rubbed away, raw and gaping. She sat back on her haunches and stared at the vastness of it all, shelled out bodies of cars peppering the ground all the way back into the horizon. From this distance it looked dead. Capable wiped a stray bead of sweat and cleaned her hands quickly. Then she stood and bolted as fast as her tired legs would take her, to one of the large rocks that broke out from the sand. She skid and sat again behind it, trying to regain her huffing breath as quietly as possible. She leaned out delicately from around the rock and scanned the surroundings for a silver boy. Something moved along the edge of her vision. Capable swallowed her breath and scanned again, spotting the something, someone, alive and well, stirring in the carved out ribcage of the dead rig.

As silently and slowly as she could physically handle, she unsheathed her knife and crawled towards the moving shape. As she got closer, as close as she could be without leaving the rocks, she could see it. Them. A person. A man, not silver and strange, but real. decorated in layers upon layers of grime encrusted rags that formed almost a solid shell around his body. His hair hung long and matted with dirt in front of his face and he was picking at something small, black, and motionless on the ground.

She moved into the open air behind him, quiet crawling on all fours. This was familiar, the preceding calm of an attack. The moment breathed life into her tired bones, rejuvenated the spring of muscles when she leaped up, aimed at an exposed, fleshy neck. A neck that had immortal fury seared and scarred into it. It was a moment of brief gasping realization that got her pinned. Terrified eyes met terrified eyes as her body knocked back, head colliding hard onto the sand. She tried to grapple, flip, squirm out from underneath him, but he had her hands clamped down with instinctive conviction above her head. Reflexively, she dropped her knife and opened her palms wide. All movement halted. He examined her, eyes catching on to different parts of her, face, hands and hair. They stared at each other for a long time, when Capable breathed out,

“Don't I know you?”

His eyes stayed focused on her's. He moved suddenly and with a speed unburdened by his encasing rags, switching his hands-- one to keep her in place, the other to snatch the knife- pressing the blade against her throat. She let out a small noise and his released his hold.

Capable sat up slowly onto her elbows and peered up at him. He met her stare, eyes bright and wild. She began to move to stand, hands still raised, precariously balancing the blade against her skin. He rose with her, jerky in his movements, knife switching between his palms.

Slowly, extremely slowly and with quivering fingers, she reached out towards him. He stood corporeally still. Capable pushed the matted mass of hair up and away from his face with a certain delicacy. She brushed off some of the grime and dirt, wiping away at hardened layers that chipped to reveal soft, peachy flesh underneath. The knife dug into her neck and she stopped.

She backed away from the blade and he let her. Once far enough away, she finally put her hands down. They stood now at a distance, both examining the other.

“Do you remember me, Max?” She sputtered, “We rode this road together, once.”

He didn't acknowledge her, but instead sat down hard, kicking up a wave of dust. His focus had returned to the dead thing he had been chewing on. A crow. Feathers broken and bent, nearly blending into the night darkened dirt. Capable rubbed her nose and scratched at her neck. Other than the occasional crunching, the canyon was silent.

She turned away from Max's chewing and called out “Nux,” in a whisper to the dark shape of the desert. Another “Nux”, slightly louder. She turned and eyed Max, who was wiping his fingers against the fabric of his pants. He gazed up at her, then past her, and put a single finger to his lips. Capable whipped around and saw Nux's form, a silver shimmer, bright and reflective off of gleaming moonlit sand. He began to walk forward and she followed making fresh footprints into the waste. Through the rubble and the wreck, she trailed behind him keeping time with his gliding motions. There among the corroded hub of the resting rig, he stopped. A body lay half covered in sand, picked clean of any skin or muscles or hearts or brains. Nux's ghost vanished when Capable came to stand next to him.

She let out a soft sigh, “there you are”, and sat at his head. His skull. She ran a hand through her already knotted hair. Here she was. She flopped back onto the sand and held her breath-- breaths, endless breaths, echoing through the walls of pulsing lungs- for a moment.

Then she got up and covered the skull thoroughly in a layer of sand, hiding it from preying scavengers. Then she dusted herself off, and started to walk. Past Max, past the broken crow, past the rig, back to the citadel.


	5. Max

The world wasn’t made for me. The world wasn't made for any of us. The living or the dead. The world was made and I was made, completely separate entities of life. And we were made for ourselves. To survive for ourselves. I walk the earth and understand the words it speaks into my feet.

I think I believed the world was mine once, years and miles ago, still drenched in promising naivety. The world could be grabbed and I had the fingers and palms to grab it. But it's hard to know for sure what I remember and what I think I remember and what happened and what I believe happened. My mind is its own twisting open wasteland of memories, converging into realities so numerous I lose track. I never know which reality it's going to be.

But there's solemn comfort in knowing that in one of those realities, I could believe the world was mine. I was mine. I had a life and family and I think even happiness, but happiness is hard to grasp. I had a car, I can grasp that. I had dreams. Dreams of warmth, dreams of comfort, dreams of laughing.

I dream of water, now. Sometimes food. A steamy cheeseburger, an open hand. But mainly my dreams are screaming. My days are screaming. Everything is screaming. Fight. Live. Survive. For us. For those you killed. This is your penance, now walk it. Feel it. Break it through your bones. Make yourself hard and callous, because this is the world and this is for you.

I can't remember if I deserve it, but there must be some truth in all that screaming. Otherwise they're wasting precious breath. This air won't last forever. Not for me and not for them.

The world I made for me is brown and blue. But sometimes there is red. The red of death, the red of pain, the red of...

Hope?

A red that tossed my body round, clipped my vocal chords, kept me still. A red that said my name.

A red of hope.

It was a word that echoed my head for hours and minutes and days on end. This red will lead you to hope. Not hope. You had hope once and you left it. Killed it. Squashed like a pestilent pus filled bug. This red will lead you to hope. Another source of hope to wreck, to ravage, to disappoint. To purge. You kill hope, you kill hope, it was you who killed the world.

There's a reality I know where once I was able to make eyelids flutter and lungs cough life. A reality that's stirring on the edge of my mind, pressing cool fingers onto my arm and face.

“Where did you find him?”

“I...went out to the canyon. He was just sitting there, eating a crow.”

“Were you alone?”

“Yes. I know, I just...I needed to find the War Boy.”

“I'm impressed he didn't kill you.”

“He drove me back, actually. He let me ride right behind him. I was even able to hold on.”

I drove her back. I drove. I felt. The road, the tires, the roar of an engine, real hands on my shoulders...

“Max, can you hear me?”

Hear? I can hear everything. All your moving limbs and muscles, it's deafening the way you move. The way you suck in air. The way you speak. You're speaking. Real. And alive. And here and now.

“That's what I thought. It's okay, Capable. Try to find him a room and go clean him up.”

“Me?”

“You brought him here, he's your responsibility. Otherwise send him back.”

Back? Back. No, there is no such thing as back, there is only forward, keep moving forward, keep looking forward, always forward. Death catches those who glance back. He gobbles them up with big meaty hands and teeth made of bullets and daggers. Death is cunning, death is kind, death is behind you. Don't go back.

“Max, Max, calm down, shhh.” She's touching you, really. This is real. Do you feel it? The gentle squeeze of fingers against your muscle. You are human. You are existing. Breathe it in until it's gone. Sear it into your mind. Those fingers are existence.

“Why don't we get you cleaned up? We'll get all that dirt off of you for once.”

She did something then. She bared her teeth, clean and white. You scare her, terrify her, bring her to her knees.

No, not bared, she's smiling. She's smiling towards you. What did you do? Analyze and understand, she's smiling for you.


End file.
